Comfort zone can hold us back in our growth.
I remember during my university days; I was struggling a lot as the curriculum suddenly changed from Malay to English. I could read, but writing was a challenge and speaking was even more difficult. When I came out to work, the environment was quite manageable although all had to be in English. When I studied at the seminary, I pushed myself to enroll in the English department, and by the time I graduated, my English had greatly improved, and I had no problem communicating with foreign professors. After that, I was sent to a Chinese-only church for 18 years, where I hardly had a chance to preach in English, and the flow of English words almost stopped, and I often had the dilemma of being stuck halfway. Later, when I was sent to a church with an English-speaking congregation, I had to practice my preaching in English many times before I dared to go up to pulpit. Slowly but surely, by now, English sermons can be preached with just one practice, and the practice time is getting shorter and shorter.
If I had stayed in the Chinese church, I probably would have become worse at preaching in English instead of better by now. But when I was willing to embrace discomfort, my grasp of English not only slowly recovered, but also continued to strengthen.
Discipleship is like learning a language, you must use it a lot to master it. Therefore, it is very important to encourage laity to leave their comfort zone and participate in discipleship training.
What I am trying to say is familiar to all of us, and that is: leaving our comfort zones and embracing the difficult is the only way we can release our potential.
Discipleship training is essentially a drill, and it takes constant practice to get better and better at it. Discipleship is like swimming; you must jump in the water to learn. No one can learn to swim in a library. Even if we read all the books on swimming in the library, we will not learn how to swim; we can only learn swimming by being in the water. Discipleship training, as the name suggests, is training and therefore must be done in drill. Yet sadly, to this day, many pastors still think they can teach people how to swim in a library. They think Bible studies are discipleship training. They think that if they teach the knowledge of the Bible, the members will become disciples of Christ and their lives will be transformed. Many pastors are still teaching people to learn to swim in libraries to this day, because this is the sweatless and easiest way. They firmly believe that they can teach people swimming in libraries, and are physically active, courageous, and joyful advocates of teaching people to learn to swim in libraries.
What can we do to encourage them to leave their comfort zones, both laity and clergy?